Pen-Elayne on the Web

Food for Thought of the Day

A popular opinion among other lefty-types vis a vis the 9-11 tragedy is "it shouldn't have come as a surprise given our foreign policy." I occasionally thought as much myself, and couldn't figure out why it seemed so, well, almost pat to me. Then one day last month, Mark Evanier (see the link to his journal at left) passed along this link to an article in the Wall Street Journal's online opinion pages by Lee Harris, entitled "Al Qaeda's Fantasy Ideology." Like Mark, I'm not sure I agree with all of it (and there are some fairly boring passages that can be skipped over, you'll know 'em when you get to 'em), but I think it's fascinating reading, and believe it takes the way we think about "the enemy" to an entirely different level. Subverting the dominant paradigm (even the dominant subversive paradigm) and all that. I hope some readers get as much out of it as I did.